


How To Stop A Nosebleed

by Corvid_Knight



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Blood, M/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Nosebleeds, he's fine i swear, mild trauma mention, my tumblr is knight-of-heart-and-art
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-07
Updated: 2018-01-07
Packaged: 2019-03-01 21:05:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,702
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13303209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Corvid_Knight/pseuds/Corvid_Knight
Summary: Dave just meant to watch stupid movies. One of them has a hell of a lot more bad shit than he actually expected. Karkat gets to try and calm him down afterwards.@the anon who asked for me to write about how Dave panicked hard enough himself a nosebleed: here ya go! Hopefully this is what you had in mind! :0)





	How To Stop A Nosebleed

It's been a good many hours since Dave announced his intention to watch an appallingly thick stack of horror movies in response to some comment Dirk made about how he (Dave) is used to your (Karkat's) "sweet romantic shit" at this point and he (Dirk) is going to come steal all the horror movies that haven't been watched for more than, say, two months. So Dave rounded up all the ones in the hive—including some that John brought over when he heard that a marathon was happening—sprawled out on the couch, and started watching.

You are not participating. Fuck no. You could teach the assholes who make those movies a thing or two about actual scary shit, but however cheesy it might be you're still not going to expose yourself to more nightmare fuel. You love Dave, but he can do without your company until he finishes with that shit. 

It does give you a nice opportunity to go in the bedroom, put on one of Dave's remixes, and take a nap. Naps are always nice, especially with the combination of your quadrantmate's (boyfriend's?) recorded voice and music winding through your head every time you half-wake. Soothing. 

The crash that startles you out of sleep and off the bed? That's not fucking soothing. Especially since it's immediately followed by a not-too-quiet "fuck—" and a stifled sound that isn't a word but still sounds terrified. 

Oh, this probably isn't good. 

You try to stand up and realize that you already are. Reflexes are fucking weird. Maybe you should take another minute to shake off the rest of your grogginess...but no. That can wait. Something's up with Dave. 

When you switch off the music there is quiet made imperfect by the low dialogue and soundtrack from the movie still playing in the living room. No noise from Dave, though, and after that crash that's more worrying than if he were sobbing and swearing. 

"Dave?" He isn't on the couch anymore. You glance at the TV and your stomach tries to twist into a knot—yes, that blood isn't yours, isn't supposed to represent yours even though the color matches, but fuck. It _looks_ like yours. "Dave, where—" 

All of the breath goes out of your chest when you realize that the red mess on the screen is not, in fact, the only blood in the room. Dave's discarded blanket is crumpled in a heap next to the couch, like he was in a hurry when he got up, and there's a dark and obvious stain on it that looks really fucking big to you. 

"Shit. _Fuck._ " Just standing here isn't helping anything, but there's exactly nothing you can do about it. Honestly, the only thing that keeps you from being frozen right here for the foreseeable future is the muffled sound you hear from the kitchen. 

(Why the kitchen? Why the fuck would he go into the kitchen, instead of going for the first aid kit in the bathroom, or better yet coming to wake you up for help? What the fuck, Dave?) 

(Karkat, you absolute fucking idiot, stop thinking and _move._ ) 

"Dave?" You can hear the anxiety in your own voice as you step into the kitchen, and you make an effort to smooth your tone out before you say anything else. "Babe, what happened, are you—holy _shit._ " 

He's sitting on the floor by the sink, leaning against the cabinet and trying to hold a dish towel against his face with hands that're shaking too badly to be very efficient. You can understand those tremors, though; the whole lower half of his face is covered in blood, it's streaked across his white shirt, his hands are both smeared with red. Dave meets your eyes for just a second—enough for you to catalogue the main emotions on his face as fear, confusion, and strong panic—then squeezes his shut. 

" _Fuck,_ Dave!" He shudders when you say that, and you try to keep your tone a little closer to what Rose calls an insider voice, as you kneel down next to him. "What the fuck—are you okay? Shit, you're obviously not fucking okay, I know—let me see." 

Dave does not react to your request at all. When you try to pull his hands down from his face he lets you do it, though, the bloody towel falling into his lap as he just lets it go. He's not cut, at least, not as far as you can tell. His nose is dripping blood, more coming out every few seconds as he gets to the point where he physically _has_ to let out at least a little air so he can pull more into his lungs. 

He's had nosebleeds before, usually little trickles when he's messing with you and one of you gets a little too rough, or when he's got a cold and refuses to stop trying to drain all the fluid out of his sinuses via his nose until he fucks something up. He's also had panic attacks, occasionally, and you've helped him deal with them more-or-less effectively. However, the combination of the two (and this ridiculous, terrifying, nauseating amount of blood) is making it really fucking hard to remember how to handle either. 

Come on, it isn't that fucking complicated. Come _on,_ asshole. 

"Tip your head forward," you tell him, as gently as you can when you're trying not to panic, and he does, still not opening his eyes. "Breathe. And do it through your fucking mouth, okay?"

That, Dave doesn't seem willing to do until you press a clean corner of the dish towel against his nose, gently pinching it shut to try and get the bleeding to stop. He actually holds his breath for as long as he can before giving up and gasping for air. "Kat—'m gonna make noise—fuck—" 

"Shh." You haven't heard him this scared in a while. "What noise, breathing?" 

"Y-yeah." 

"That's okay. Just breathe anyway, calm down. Nothing's going to happen." The blood on his face kind of comes off when you start using another corner of the towel to wipe at it. "Can you tell me what happened?" 

It takes him a minute and a few forced breaths to be able to actually say anything else. 

"Fell asleep watching that shit." He's still not breathing right, and you just wait and keep trying to clean him off as he tries to calm down. "You know how some of them were new? John brought 'em? Fell asleep watching one. Woke up— _kinda_ woke up, 'cause I wasn't all the way right—and there was a fucking _puppet—_ " 

"I'm going to fucking kill John." 

"Not his fault." 

"He knows better." 

Dave just sighs, an openmouthed huff that lets you see that he's managed to get some amount of blood at least as far as his tongue. Or maybe he bit his lip or tongue when he was panicking. You're not sure which. It's gross either way, and you make a mental note to make sure he washes his mouth out with water as soon as you're sure he's not bleeding. 

"It wasn't even an actual puppet," he says after a moment, finally opening his eyes to blink at you. "Just an asshole in a mask that kind of looked a little like— _you_ know. Saying shit about how he set stuff up so the idiots you're supposed to be rooting for, the protagonists? Set shit up so they can maybe get out alive, have it all come up sunshine and fucking _roses,_ and I look at that guy—I'm still half-asleep, you get that, right? And my fucking brain goes, 'hey, look, there's your bro, there's _Cal,_ this ain't a fuckin' movie, this is something _he_ set up, you better get ready—" 

His eyes have been getting wider as his words get faster, and even though you normally just let him talk himself out, now is an exception. Dave goes quiet almost immediately when you tap his lips with two fingers, focusing on you again and taking a deep breath before you have a chance to tell him to do it. 

"It's a movie," you tell him.

"I know. Well, _now_ I know, fuck, I obviously didn't then." He laughs, shakily, as you cautiously remove the dish towel from his face and wait to see if he's done bleeding. "I hate those movies. You know they're either gonna fuck up and die, or do everything right and still die." 

"Both suck." He's still got blood around his nostrils and down his face, but there's isn't any more being added to what's already there. "Dave, you're a mess." 

He looks down at himself and laughs again, with a rueful note but without the unsteadiness from last time. "Yeah. Fuck. I didn't know I could get a nosebleed from losing my shit over a cheesy horror flick." 

"Well, we just learn new shit all the time, don't we?" You roll your eyes at him, and get the dubious reward of him sticking his tongue out at you. "Go change your fucking shirt and wash that shit off, I'm getting that DVD out and saving it for later destruction. Then we're watching a fucking safe, non-traumatizing romcon. Deal?" 

Dave snorts, nods, and gets to his feet, leaning against you for the walk out of the kitchen, before he has to detour to head for the bathroom while you go over to the TV. 

The disc gets snapped in half as soon as you get it out of the player, and so do the five other discs you find with similar titles in the stack of movies. You leave the pieces on the shelf, reminding yourself to destroy them even more irrevocably later, and pick a movie you know Dave actually likes. By the time he comes back out, you're already on the couch with the opening scene rolling, and he grins as he comes to settle down more-or-less on top of you, cuddling down with a relieved sigh. 

"You okay?" you ask him, even though you're pretty sure you know the answer to that. 

Sure enough, he nods. "Mhm. Now I am."


End file.
